Schwarz switches for Schauer

The AP is reporting that Former Congressman Joe Schwarz has decided to endorse Democratic State Senator Mark Schauer over Republican Tim Walberg who defeated Schwarz for the 7th Congressional seat 2 years ago in the GOP primary.

Schwarz told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he decided to endorse Schauer over Republican Rep. Tim Walberg because the anti-tax Club for Growth began running ads critical of Schauer.

The Club for Growth injected more than $1 million into the 2006 primary, helping Walberg defeat Schwarz, then a first-term congressman.

(snip)

Schwarz says he couldn't remain neutral in the race once the group got involved. He says it's "the straw that broke the camel's back."

Dueling partisan polling shows leads for both candidates while external polling has shown Schauer closing the distance in what has generally been considered a strong pick-up opportunity for Democrats looking to increase their majority in the U.S. Congress.

A debate between Schauer and Walberg is set for October 7.

Tim's tantrum: Is Walberg worried?

Poor Congressman Tim Walberg (R-Tipton) is starting to show the strains of being a radical right winger whose record of over-heated rhetoric and crass campaigning is catching up with him. It seems the Battle Creek Enquirer's Assistant Local Editor Susan Demas has offended poor Timmy by actually reporting the truth, that former Congressman Joe Schwarz is hanging around Battle Creek and leaving open the possibility for a rematch against Walberg, who defeated Schwarz in the last primary election mostly with slash and burn attack ads against "liberal" Joe Schwarz paid for with dough from anti-tax zealots but then narrowly beat out a weak Democratic candidate with zero money and little or no support from the party. Timmy's response to the horrible truth was to cut the reporter from their media spam list...

"I took you off the (media) list," his spokesman, Matt Lahr, informed me this month, "because the congressman has decided he will no longer talk to you."

Demas' response is both devastating and hilarious:

It's not personal. It's just a bad public relations move, typical of a staff composed of 20-something "Jesus Camp" counselors who almost managed to lose the general election to Sharon Renier, a chicken farmer with $1.03 in the bank.

They're not ready for primetime.

Walberg is the Congressional equivalent to those Pat Robertson Law School grads stinking it up in the Justice Department courtesy of soon-to-be outgoing Attorney General Alberto "What did I know and when did I know it" Gonzalez.

Reasonably under control

Recently, Congressman Tim Walberg (R-Tipton) compared war-torn Iraq favorably to the American cities of Detroit and Harvey, Illinois.

“…talking to our troops as well as some of the officers who have returned, they indicate to me that 80 to 85% … of the country (Iraq) is reasonably under control at least as well as Detroit…"

Despite having his foot caught in his mouth and his head firmly planted inside his rectum, Walberg continued:

"in many places it’s as safe and cared for as Detroit or Harvey, IL or some other places that have trouble with armed violence that takes place on occasion.”

Instead of apologizing for being a callous jackass and a drooling idiot, Walberg dug deeper. Speaking at the Jackson County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner (note the occasion for its irony), he further insisted:

"No apology is necessary… I have no reason to…There was nothing racist about it… I meant it as a compliment to people in Detroit and Chicago."

Now, if Congressman Walberg truly meant no harm by his assinine oral diarrhea then why not simply back down? Hell, why not say that he meant if you ignore Baghdad and other major cities and take into account only the Green Zone where the US military has its largest presence and the Kurdish areas as well as the areas where no one lives then... oh, I can't even try to pretend he has a point here because it's such a silly and idiotic argument. The simple and obvious answer is that he's a racist jackass. The longer answer is that the modern Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln but instead the party of Buchanan (as in Pat) and the party of Duke (as in David) and has won many an election by playing to racism in white voters.

According to what I have found, the death rate in Iraq just for US forces is roughly 40% more than the murder rate in Detroit. Over 3,000 American troops have died in combat since the war began. Best estimates peg the Iraqi death total at something close to 60,000 with estimates varying wildly including some in excess of 100,000 but none significantly lower than the estimate I've chosen to use. In 2003 there were 366 murders reported in Detroit. The population of Iraq is roughly 27 times that of Detroit. Even then, the Detroit murder rate doesn't even come close to the number of people killed in this pathetic war Congressman Walberg is trying to cheerlead. Sorry, Congressman, but your math sucks, so does your position on the war and so does your less than subtle race-baiting.

Even Fox News had to report this when former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tried to spin the chaos and bloodshed in Iraq as something akin to an American city with a large population of blacks (wow, it's practically like a Republican talking point!):

a New York Times op-ed by two Brookings Institution researchers, Adriana Lins de Albuquerque and Michael O’Hanlon, claims that Baghdad’s murder rate is among the highest in the world. Supposedly Baghdad’s annualized murder rate from April to October this year ranged from an incredible 100 to 185 per 100,000 people -- a number, they pointed out, that averaged several times greater than the rate in Washington, D.C.

And while studies many report lower figures, chances are those were created by statistical sleight of hand and separating deaths into different types and thus reducing the real number of murders in Iraq. So, once you weed out the propaganda from the US military, it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that Congressman Walberg is full of it and should just apologize or at least spare us any more excuses of what he meant by his idiotic comparison of a Michigan city to a war zone.

The war in Iraq is a disastrous nightmare and most Iraqis live in daily fear of car bombings, kidnappings, and the everyday terror that Tim Walberg would be scared shitless to truly see up close. Tim Walberg's term can't come to an end soon enough. Hopefully this time the moderate voices in the Republican Party will step up and do the right thing and send this idiot back to Tipton or, failing that, the Democrats draft a worthy and capable candidate to defeat a man who compares American cities to countries in the midst of a Neo Con-created Civil War.

Simply put, Tim Walberg is a stupid, lying sack of crap... Hey, I meant that as a compliment!